November 17, 2009

Palestinian History and Identity in Israeli Schools

By Sa'id Barghouti - Published in Nakba Education on the Path of Return (Autumn 2009)


Children from Kufr Qasem develop their own activities to educate one another about history, geography and their rights as part of Badil's Youth Education and Activation project, August 2009. Badil


This article is based on my personal experience as a teacher of Palestinian students in Israeli public schools and through my work as school inspector and history curriculum team coordinator for Arab schools from 1975 until 2004. During this period I was engaged in efforts at textbook reform, and on research about Israel's education system which I undertook for my doctoral dissertation.1

Background

Israel has a highly centralized public education system which is operated and controlled by the Ministry of Education. The only major exception is the ultra-orthodox Jewish education system which enjoys autonomy for ideological reasons.2 The state education system operated by the Ministry is composed of two separate streams: the public secular stream, and public national religious stream.
Palestinian students make up one quarter of all students in the Israeli state education system.3 All public schools in Palestinian communities in Israel belong to the public secular stream; no public religious schools are available for Palestinians. Public education for Palestinians is administered by the Department for Arab Education, which is a special administrative entity within the Ministry of Education and under its direct control. The Department for Arab Education has no autonomous decision making authorities.

Up until 1987, the Department for Arab Education was headed by a Jewish-Israeli director who was appointed by the Ministry and involved in policy making to ensure control over the Palestinian population.4 Since then, Palestinians have been appointed to lead the Department but have been excluded from policy decision making as a result of parallel organizational reform which provided for the integration of Arab public schools into the Jewish public education system and its local authorities. Thus, while the Department for Arab Education continued to exist and came to be headed by a Palestinian employed by the Ministry, the heads of Arab Education have held no real power. The Department is only meant to oversee the education of Palestinians and answer to Jewish-Israelis who continue to be in charge.5

From the beginning, Israeli politicians saw in the state education system, an instrument to realize Zionist political objectives: the founding of a Jewish nation with a shared identity rooted in Zionist beliefs.6 Conversely, the educational system was used to ensure a complete lack of Arab and Palestinian identity among the Palestinian citizens of the state.7

In 1953, Israel passed the Public Education Law with the aim to centralize the education system. In this context, the goals of public education were defined and formalized for the first time. The first goal stated that the educational system seeks to “raise youth on the values of Israeli culture, and love of the [Jewish] nation and people of Israel.”8 This goal remained in place throughout subsequent amendments of the law. No positive goals have been formulated for the education of Palestinians based on the values of Arab, Muslim, and Christian culture and the Palestinian nation. Thus, the teaching of Palestine's history in Israeli schools, both Jewish and Arab, is based on the Zionist narrative which holds that Jews are one people that formed their identity in the land of Israel (Palestine) more than one thousand years ago, and returned to it to form that identity again.9

Of course Palestine was, and has remained, inhabited by its Arab-Palestinian population, who have marked it with its culture, landmarks, and language. But the Zionist narrative avoids facing this reality. This is expressed in Israeli educational texts and curricula through:
  • the secularization, of myths from the Torah, i.e. their transformation into “facts”: the myth of “the promised land”, for example, is turned into an actual “land of the forefathers” and the presentation of Israel as “the historical homeland of the Jewish nation;”
  • promotion of a system of social beliefs, such as “we are victims,” “we call for peace,” “our wars are defensive,” “our arms are pure,” “Palestinians hate us,” “they are the aggressors;”10
  • selectiveness in the choice of facts and explanations, ignoring contradictory arguments, especially facts connected to Arab-Palestinian history, or at best, presenting them as a “narrative” that is part of distorted history.
Main findings from research

In 1953, the Ministry of Education issued the first history curriculum for Jewish public and religious elementary schools.11 This curriculum was translated into Arabic with some adjustments,12 and Palestinian students were expected to learn the same narrative as their Jewish peers. Arab and Jewish teachers were subsequently charged with the task of preparing textbooks according to that curriculum. History at that time was taught in a complete chronological cycle, with ideas introduced in elementary school (fifth through eighth grade), revisited and expanded upon in High School (ninth through twelfth grade). In my research, I undertook, among others, to investigate how Zionist history has been presented to Palestinian students in history textbooks up until 1975.

Early history textbooks for Palestinian fifth graders,13 tell the history of Palestine from the perspective of the [Jewish] “people of Israel” based on the Torah. Exceptions are a few scattered paragraphs which state that the Canaanites colonized the mountains of “Judea” and the “Negev,” the Jebusites colonized the mountains of Jerusalem, and that Palestinians differ from Canaanites and are not Semites.14

As expected, the texts were strongly driven by the Torah: “The Hebrews were begot from Abraham, who crossed the Euphrates and settled in an area which naturally splits into three parts, including the middle region, called Sharon, and the northern region, which is separated from the middle region by the Jezreel Valley.”15 Canaanites that lived in that area are described as “the primitive tribes.”16

The textbook then mentions Jacob, calling him by his last name, Israel: “Israel became the father of the Israelite tribes.”17 It then describes the exile of the Israelites to Egypt, and their flight from Egypt, led by Moses: “The exodus of the Israelites led by Moses was an important event in their history that remained in the nation’s mind with the passing of eras. It was a great event that placed them in history as a nation.”18 When the book gets to Joshua Ben Nun, it points to his heroic feats and the sacrifice of his people, “which secured victory for them against their enemies.”19

The textbook follows the narrative from the Torah, era after era, until the destruction of the temple and the Babylonian capture. From there, the Jews return from captivity during the reign of Cyrus the Great. The book does not deviate from heroic descriptions of the Israelites, justifying all of their wars, and describing the indigenous population of Canaanites and others as “enemies and primitive people” while using contemporary Hebrew names for names of places and localities, and ignoring their original names.

This method is repeated with regard to the history of Palestine under Hellenic rule. The main thrust of the text here concerns the heroic deeds of the Maccabees and their wars, “Judah Maccabee went forth with his brothers to secure the foundations of governance and protect the people from enemies, battling the Adamites, and Omarites and the inhabitants of the Galilee, as well as standing up to military campaigns of the Seleucids.”20

Sixth grade history textbooks do not differ in method or content. The history of Palestine under Roman rule is the history of Jews in “Israel” until the destruction of the temple in 70 BC. About seven hundred years of the indigenous Palestinians' history is absent from the pages of the book until the onset of the Arab-Islamic conquest. It briefly mentions the Arab conquest of Jerusalem under the heading “The Conquest of Jerusalem,” with one sentence in particular standing out: “Omar [the second Muslim caliph] treated the Jews, who helped the Muslims, well, left them their property and pardoned them from paying taxes.”21 The aim of this sentence is to provide assurance of a Jewish presence in the city at that time.

Although this book revolves around Arab-Islamic history and Islamic civilization until the fall of the Abbasid empire, it does not mention Palestine until the start of the crusades. It also remains silent about Arab initiatives in Palestine, such as the building of Ramla by Sulayman bin Abd al-Malek, and the construction of the Hisham Palace in Jericho. Casual mention is given (pp. 155-156) of the building of the Dome of the Rock, and then the Aqsa mosque, during the reign of Abd al-Malek ibn Marwan.

Returning to the history of Palestine, a history textbook for seventh graders called “Yearning for Zion” contains the following sentence: “facing [the Christian oppression of Jews in Europe], their attachment to their beliefs grew and their desire to return to Zion, the land that the Romans forced them out of in the first century AD, deepened.”22 Under the heading “The Relationship Between Jews in Diaspora and the Land of Israel” the book reviews at length stories of individuals or small groups of Jews that immigrated to Tiberias, Safad, and the villages of Galilee between the years 1141-1662. It describes their achievements in every field, portraying them as the ones who made the area blossom.

To sum up, the textbook omits the history of Palestine from 638 to 1791 except insofar as it pertains to Jews. The two main exceptions are the construction the walls of Jerusalem by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1542, to protect the city from Bedouin attacks (p. 186), and the mention of Napoleon's siege of Akka (p. 301).

The Zionist historical narrative is completed in the eighth grade history textbook23 which presents the contemporary history of Palestine. The topic is divided into two units: “The English in Israel” (instead of the British Mandate in Palestine) and “The Founding of the State of Israel.” Thirty of sixty class periods that eighth graders must attend are devoted to this second chapter. In the spirit of the curriculum, the narrative in this book revolves around subheadings with suggestive meanings, such as “The Continuous Yearning for Return and National Independence” (pp. 178-182). This chapter, as well as the chapters that follow, address at length everything that has any connection to contemporary Jewish history from the perspective of the Zionist historical narrative, until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Under the heading “War of Independence” (p. 222), the book states that “the armies of the Arab countries entered the country in May of 1948 and fought against the Israeli forces . . . which were able to push back these armies until the four countries that have shared borders with Israel were forced . . . to sign a truce.” As for Arab-Palestinian society, it is completely absent in the textbook. Moreover, not even one word is spent on the Palestinian refugees.

This trend repeats itself in the high school curriculum and textbooks, and which are all translated from Hebrew, with the only exception of the book The History of Arabs prepared by Salman Falah (a former education inspector) who writes that Omar Ibn al-Khatab divided greater Syria into the regions of Hims, Hama, Aleppo and Israel [sic].24

Efforts at educational reform

In 1975, I began my work as school inspector and coordinator for the history team in the Arab schools and set out to change the situation. A first success came in 1976 when a new curriculum was issued for elementary and middle schools.25 The new curriculum differed from its predecessor in the following ways:
  • The name “Palestine” was inserted into the curriculum for the first time, instead of “the land of Israel.” Places were named using their original Arabic names rather than the Hebraized names of the older curriculum;
  • The emphasis on the Torah narrative was reduced, and the histories of other peoples, like the Canaanites, were highlighted. Emphasis on the Zionist narrative of the history of Palestine was reduced, and an Arab-Palestinian historical narrative was introduced for contrast. For instance, a new headline read: “The beginning of Jewish colonization and the Arabs in Palestine26” instead of the previous “Yearning for Zion and the Return to Israel.” In other words, the focus of the curriculum shifted from the Zionist historical narrative of Israel towards a history of Palestine.
Following the publication of the new curriculum, I also oversaw the preparation of a series of books that replaced the previous textbooks. A new book which most strongly related to Palestinian history was a history textbook for the sixth grade.27 It said, for example, that “The Torah states that the prophet Moses . . .” (p. 26), and that “Joshua Ben Nun resorted to subterfuge in his battle against the Canaanites” (p. 28). This stylistic change, which makes mention of the Torah in reported language, improved the objectivity of the text, allowing for a critical approach towards the Torah-Zionist narrative. A seventh grade textbook surveying at length the history of Palestine under the rule of the crusaders, moreover, notes: “The crusaders also built relationships with the Muslims in their everyday life by hiring Arab craftsmen, as well as being influenced by their Eastern style of dress and manners.”28

Part two of the history textbook for the eighth grade contains the heading “Palestine in the Age of Political Organizations”, and says: “For forty years in the nineteenth century, the Ottomans tried to control the inhabitants of Palestine by recognizing local leadership.”29 In this way, the Arab-Palestinian narrative began to gain ground in textbooks, albeit in a limited fashion.
As for high school, I oversaw the preparation of a new curriculum in 1999, which was only approved by the Education Ministry after a two-year long battle. This curriculum included an entire unit called “Modern Arab-Palestinian Society.”30 It covers the Palestinian presence on the land until 1948. In the unit on “The War of 1948,” we prepared a chapter titled “The Origin of the Refugee Problem (Expulsion? Escape?).”31 By the time I stopped working with the Ministry of Education in 2004, a version of the textbook that included this chapter had not yet been published. The Arab-Palestinian narrative did however appear in a general, brief form in the three sections of textbooks over which I oversaw preparation.32One chapter ends with the sentence, “many Palestinians whose cities and villages were occupied were forced to leave their homes and became refugees, because of the dangers of war and its destruction, and because of a number of massacres that were perpetrated against them, such as the Massacre of Deir Yassin in April 1948.”

The ideological backlash

In April 2004, I left my post at the Ministry of Education, but I continued to follow the government's development of the curriculum. A new high school curriculum was issued in 200733, which was followed in 2008 by a new curriculum for elementary and middle school levels,34 replacing both the 1976 and 1999 curricula. The new curriculum for elementary school completely erased modern Palestinian history. Also erased was the unit called “The History of Arab-Palestinian Society in the Modern Era” for high schoolers. Again, the Zionist historical narrative is imposed on Palestinian students in history textbooks which ignore the history and culture of the Palestinian people. Just as in the period before 1975, anything connected to the history of the Palestinian people has been erased in the revised curricula of 2007 and 2008.
Such orientation will leave a negative impact on students in the long term. First, the connection between the Palestinian-Arab students and their history, culture and identity is severed. This effect is reinforced by the lack of extra-curricular educational activities in Arab schools, such as the commemoration of important events, including the Nakba, massacres, and important political events. This in addition to the prohibition on commemorating national personalities and thinkers such as Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said. Such commemorations are now about to become explicitly banned by the Ministry of Education. Severing this connection means that the cultural wellsprings, which allow students to build their collective history and identity, are dried out. As a result, students are likely to slide towards alienation from their homeland, and opportunities for reflection on the Palestinian people's history and their ongoing Nakba, which are vital for students to form their world view, are missed.
The second impact of a Zionist historical narrative in curricula, including the use of Hebrew names and the Hebraization of Arabic names of places in textbooks, is to raise students on the idea that the country, Palestine, called Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), belongs to Jews. Palestinian students are inculcated with the idea that Jews are the original and oldest inhabitants of the land and the most attached to it. Raising Arab-Palestinian students on this idea, while not providing adequate cultural and historical knowledge to challenge it, encourages alienation from their homeland.

Feelings of alienation will later on undermine the capacity of students to tackle oppressive policies, especially in matters of land and social culture, and transform them into easy prey for the dominant Israeli political discourse which can be summarized as follows: “this is the land of the Jewish people. We returned to our rightful historic homeland and built it up. You Arab-Palestinians are just ‘passers-by,’ strangers to this land, and a source of annoyance to our presence.” This is the discourse underlying Israeli political demands for the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Palestinian history teachers can do little to correct this negative trend. They are limited by the state curriculum and textbooks, and banned from deviating from these texts. They are also monitored by officials in the schools, and by the Ministry of Education. Ultimately, Palestinian students have no choice but to memorize history as it is presented in the textbooks, because they will take their final high school graduation exams (bagrut), in which the Ministry of Education prepares the questions and evaluates the students' answers.

Some would argue that history classes and textbooks are no longer central for students to get to know their history and build a collective memory and identity. New means of communication, as well as the role of television and computers, have become the “vectors” of that memory. Scholars, however, agree that school textbooks, and especially history textbooks, have remained central in building memory and fashioning identity.35 This, because students, like others in society, absorb information from various sources in a haphazard and unsystematic manner, and usually in an individual setting. History classes on the other hand, meet day after day, year after year, and from an early age until maturity. School history education is delivered through systematic, didactic and pedagogical methods, and in a collective setting with peers. History classes and history textbooks therefore remain the central and strongest element in the fashioning of identity, and play a crucial role in building collective memory, or, as in our case, erasing it.

Source and endnotes

Britain must de-Zionise Itself Immediately

November 17, 2009 By Gilad Atzmon


On Monday the British TV broadcaster, Channel 4 screened Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby, a devastating expose of the Jewish lobby in the UK*. ‘We couldn’t find a conspiracy’ affirmed Peter Oborne the Daily Mail’s political commentator behind the film. He was right. After running the show for so many years, the Jewish lobby’s purchasing of British politicians and media presence is in the open.

The Guardian reported today that two years ago a controversial study by American academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer explored the influence of the Israel lobby over US foreign policy “but Britain's pro-Israel organisations have been subjected to far too less scrutiny.” This is indeed the case, and as Oborne disclosed, both British politicians and Zionist pressure groups enjoy it to the max.

In the film Sir Richard Dalton, a former ambassador to Libya and Iran, said: "I don't believe, and I don't think anybody else believes these contributions come with no strings attached." I would suggest that ‘strings attached’ is a very gentle way of putting it. ‘Chained to submission’ would be far closer to the truth.

Seemingly a British, consensus case against Zionism and Zionist infiltration is piling up.

The Jewish community is not happy at all. After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they are used to being untouchable.

Labor MP Denis MacShane, who operates as the House of Common’s UK equivalent of the ‘anti defamation league’ told the Jerusalem Post "if there is a Jewish /Israel lobby here, it is not very effective, as Israel is almost treated as a pariah state in the media and has few friends in politics."

MacShane may be right; one cannot buy friendship with money. But according to Monday’s broadcast one can certainly buy British politician’s subservience for just a few shekels. According to the Guardian 50% of the Shadow Cabinet are now ‘friends of Israel’. In that context one common saying comes to mind. “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”

I would assume that if there was any public respect left for the British Parliament, British political parties and the BBC, it should be gone by now. Just a few months ago Brits were devastated to find out about their MPs' personal expenses bills. Yesterday they learned about their leading politician’s affiliation with the darkest possible regime and ideology around. They also learned that their national broadcast corporation is influenced by Zionist pressure groups run from Jerusalem.

Mark Gardner from the Zionist ‘Community Security Trust’ is not happy either. He complained that Dispatches producers behaved as if they were investigating a “criminal gang rather than various Jewish community-linked organizations,"

Gardner is also correct. It is indeed tragic to admit that the Jewish lobby is far more worrying than a criminal gang. It is there to serve a murderous state with a devastating record of crimes against humanity. Thanks to the Jewish lobby, we are all complicit in the Zionist crime. Not only are those lobbyists heavily corrupted and removed from any ethical value system, they also corrupt everything they touch. They obviously contaminate every politician who is happy to take their shekels. Consequently they incriminate us all as a society.

Watching Cannel 4’s Dispatches yesterday I wondered to myself whether this is the ‘democracy’ some British politicians, such as David Miliband insist on spreading around. I also wonder whether this is the governing model that Jewish Chronicle writer Nick Cohen and the Israeli Hasbara committee author David Aaronovitch were trying to promote when they were supporting the invasion of Iraq back in 2003.

Political commentator Peter Oborne indeed fulfilled his promise. He told us almost everything we want to know about the lobby, “who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying.”

However, there is a single observation that must be added. People out there must never forget that Britain was taken into a war that cost more than a million Iraqi lives and at the time Lord Levy was the Number 1 Labour fund-raiser. Putting the two together: an illegal war that only serves Israeli interests and Sir Richard Dalton’s observation that Zionist ‘contribution’ comes with ‘strings attached’, leaves a very bitter taste. Due to its heavily corrupted politicians, Britain is now willingly serving the darkest possible racist national ideology and supporting a criminal terrorist state.

British politicians and media are caught in bed with too many Zionist wolfs. In order to reclaim sovereignty and dignity, Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately.

*In Britain at least the TV program can be seen here:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3010424

Jordan's king rejects pro-Israeli's anti-Iran plans

Press TV - November 17, 2009 15:20:44 GMT



Jordan's King Abdullah II has expressed his country's “rejection” of any anti-Iran measure, speaking to a visiting group of a major pro-Israeli lobby group in the US.

The rare pro-Iran expression by the King of Jordan, which has formal diplomatic relations with Israel, unlike Iran which considers the entity as illegitimate, came during a meeting Monday with a delegation representing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israeli pressure group in the US that widely influences American foreign policy in the Middle East.

In the meeting, King Abdullah called for "dialogue" as the only channel for resolving the dispute over Iran's nuclear case.

His comment came after Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon rejected speculations that the warnings of any military attack on Iran are just a bluff, insisting that they are very real.

According to anti-lobbyist groups in the US such as 'Common Cause,' AIPAC gives money to over 90 percent of US Members of Congress and has virtual control over every congressional committee and subcommittee that is responsible for making foreign policy in the Middle East.

Although some members of AIPAC have been charged and convicted of spying for Israel, the lobby group continues to function and influence policy decisions in the US unhindered.

Meanwhile, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again made the provocative statement last week that Washington will keep every option on the table when it comes to halting Iran's nuclear program, hoping that it would serve as a 'warning' to Tehran.

"We've always said that every option is on the table. Our goal is to prevent or dissuade Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," Clinton claimed.

Iran has reiterated that its activities are conducted in line with its obligations to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which it is a signatory, and that it only seeks the civilian applications of the technology.

Western nuclear powers, namely Britain, France, Germany and the United States continue to claim, under heavy pressure from Tel Aviv, that the Iranian government is after nuclear weaponry.

This is while Israel is widely known to possess over 200 nuclear warheads and refuses to sign any international atomic regulatory and non-proliferation treaty.

“Israeli Ministries Funding the Rabbi who Endorses Killing Gentile Babies”

Al Manar

17/11/2009 - Israeli daily Haaretz published a report on Tuesday in which it said that there are Israeli ministries funding Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the rabbi who endorsed killing gentile babies.

The Haaretz repost says:
“Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov “Jack” Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other “political/ideological” murderers. True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them. The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies.”

“Is that so? Not really,” Haaretz continues.

“For example, government ministries regularly transfer support and funding to a yeshiva whose rabbi determined that it is permissible to kill gentile babies “because their presence assists murder, and there is reason to harm children if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us … it is permissible to harm the children of a leader in order to stop him from acting evilly … we have seen in the Halakha that even babies of gentiles who do not violate the seven Noahide laws, there is cause to kill them because of the future threat that will be caused if they are raised to be wicked people like their parents.”

Lior Yavne, who oversees research at the Yesh Din human rights organization, checked and found that in 2006-2007, the Ministry of Education department of Torah institutions transferred over a million shekels to the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar.

The Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs has allocated over 150,000 shekels to the yeshiva since 2007, on scholarships for students with financial difficulties studying there. And what can they learn with the help of public funding from the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira? According to selected items published last week in the media, the boys can learn that Teitel is not only innocent, but also a real saint.”

“Their spiritual leader stated in his book, “Torat Hamelekh” that “a national decision is not necessary in order to permit the shedding of blood of an evil kingdom. Even individuals from the afflicted kingdom can attack them.”

The commandments in the book do not suffice only with gentiles; you can also find in them approval to attack leftist professors: every citizen in the kingdom opposing us who encourages the fighters or expresses satisfaction with their actions is considered a pursuer and his killing is permissible,” wrote the rabbi and adds, “and also considered a pursuer is someone whose remarks weaken our kingdom or have a similar effect.”

Not long ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that he would ask European Union countries to halt their support for the Breaking the Silence organization because he was displeased with their publications.

The Israeli minister surely has reservations about the rabbi’s publications. He is invited to approach his colleagues at the Ministry of Education and at the Ministry of Social Affairs.”

Israeli army kidnapped 6200 children since 2000 Official report

Middle East Monitor
November 16, 2009

An official report, received by Arab League from the minister of prisoners' affairs in the Palestinian Authority (Ramallah), revealed that the Israeli occupation forces have kidnapped about 6,200 Palestinian children since the beginning of Al Aqsa Intifada (2000), including approximately 337 children still detained in Israeli prisons and interrogation centers.

During last Saturday's meeting of the Arab League's permanent delegates council, which was set to discuss the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Minister Issa Qaraqe introduced the report, which unveiled the "repressive, inhumane practices of the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian children in Israeli prisons and detention camps," stressing that this violates the rules of international law, conventions on children's rights, and all international norms.

The report pointed out that "any person under the age of 18 is considered a child, according to international law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and, recently, Israeli domestic law," and according to the definition of juvenile by the United Nations' Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, which were adopted in the General Assembly Resolution 45/113, dated December 14, 1990.

Qaraqe stated that the Israeli occupation authorities "deprive detained children from the basic rights granted by international conventions, such as the right to know the reason for their arrest, the right to counsel, the right of families to know the reason and the place of detention of their child, the right to appear before the judge, the right to object to the charge and lodge an appeal against it, the right to communicate with the outside world, and the right to a humane treatment that preserves the dignity of the detained child."

The report warned that the occupation authorities, "blatantly violated the rights of detained children"; dealt with them as "potential subversives", "and subjected them to different types of torture and cruel treatment, such as beating, sleep deprivation, starvation, sexual harassment, and deprivation of visits. The occupation forced applied the worst mental and physical means to extract confessions from child prisoners and to pressure them to work for Israeli intelligence."

The report also mentioned that during the first Intifada, massive numbers of children were arrested and detained on charges of throwing stones and other forms of political resistance, whereas, during the second intifada, Tel Aviv began adopting administrative detention against Palestinian children and it started convicting and detaining children under the age of 14 for periods of up to 6 months. The report further stated that, according to the 2002 annual report of the Defense of Children International organization, those arrest patterns did not exist during the years of the first intifada.

Pakistan Taliban airs video denial

Aljazeera English

November 16, 2009


Attacks that have continued across Pakistani towns and cities are being blamed on Tehreek e-Taliban, Pakistan's Taliban.

However, the group has issued its first video statement denying involvement in targeting civilians and has blamed external forces for at least two recent blasts.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman of the Tehreek e-Taliban, posted the video statement on YouTube on Monday.

The message refers to a bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad, which the spokesman said was orchestrated to prepare the ground for a military operation in South Waziristan, a stronghold for Pakistan's Taliban fighters.

He also said his group had no role in the bomb blast in a Peshawar market that killed at least 100 people as well as an attack in Charsada, a town located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

Tariq said Taliban attacks never aimed to target civilians, but that the explosions were linked to Blackwater activities in the country.

Thousands protest Peres' visit to Argentina

Press TV - November 17, 2009 09:03:17 GMT

Protestors rally against the visit of Israel's President Shimon Peres to Argentina
outside the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, November 16, 2009.


Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators gathered in the square opposite the Argentinean parliament in Buenos Aires to protest President Shimon Peres' visit to Argentina.

"It's a disgrace that the president of our country is meeting today with the child-murderer, Shimon Peres... There are thousands of people who came here today to protest against the hospitality shown to a representative of an occupying and oppressive government," one of the protestors said.

The protestors carried pictures and placards glorifying Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, and the Leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

The signs read "Get out of Argentina, murderer Shimon Peres", while others said "Death to Zionist-fascist Israel, officer of American imperialism in the Middle East, murderers of the Palestinian people!" the signs also included pictures of Palestinian children killed during Israel's Operation Cast Lead at the beginning of the year.

CNN on our new "huge, huge bomb" to use against Iran

What could possibly lead Iran to want to hide their nuclear facilities?

Here is Wolf Blitzer and Barbara Starr talking last night on CNN about the Iranians and what the U.S. might to do them; it's really pitch-perfect:

BLITZER: Regarding Iran, a new report raises some disturbing possibilities about its nuclear program, and that's prompting fears from the United States over how to respond.

Let's bring in our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.

Barbara, what are you learning?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests Iran could -- could be hiding more secret nuclear sites, and that is raising the stakes on all sides.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STARR (voice-over): Iran's once secret underground nuclear fuel enrichment plant. The Pentagon is worried Iran is now burying weapons factories so deep, that the current arsenal of bombs can't reach them, leaving the U.S. with no viable military option if a strike was ever ordered.

This new Air Force 15-ton bomb may change that calculation.

JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: We'd certainly be able to take this out with a massive ordnance penetrator, the 30,000-pound boss.

STARR: This is the massive ordnance penetrator, or MOP, now being rushed into development to be carried on B-2 and B-52 bombers. The most likely targets? Iran and North Korea, which are believed to have buried weapons facilities hundreds of feet underground or into the sides of mountains.

PIKE: Some of those would probably require this massive ordnance penetrator simply because they are buried so deep and no other bomb would be able to certainly destroy them.

STARR: At 30,000 pounds, the MOP, some experts say, will be able to penetrate 650 feet of concrete, a significant boost over current bunker-busting bombs like the 2,000-pound BLU-109, which can penetrate just six feet of concrete, and the 5,000-pound GBU-28 which can go through about 20 feet of concrete.

GEOFF MORRELL, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: This has been a capability that we have long believed was missing from our quiver, our arsenal, and we wanted to make sure we've filled in that gap.

STARR: No air strikes against North Korea or Iran appear to be in the works, but Iran says it could start enriching uranium here in the next two years, and both the U.S. and Israel want to ensure that Iran cannot manufacture and assemble a nuclear weapon.

All of this has now led to more funding for the MOP. The Pentagon plans to have the first bombs available by December 2010, two years earlier than planned.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: Now, the Pentagon likes to say it's not helpful to speculate on future military targets, but certainly this weapon gives the Pentagon, Wolf, an option it hasn't had before -- Wolf.

BLITZER: It's a huge, huge bomb, Barbara. Thanks very much for that.

Wolf was practically breathless with excitement as he marveled there at the end about what a big, big, powerful bomb that is. He looked like he was in need of CPR or some other type of relief. "It's a huge, huge bomb, Barbara."

What possible reason could those crazy, irrational Iranians have for wanting to hide their nuclear facilities? It's not like anyone's threatening them or anything. And remember: the proof that Iran is a unique, Nazi-like threat is that they allegedly have people in their government that threaten other countries with military attacks. No responsible, civilized country would do that.

Iran's evil intent is also demonstrated by their recent decision to allow IAEA inspectors to examine their Qom facility, which proved that there were no active centrifuges there, just as Iran said. Truly peaceful countries would never allow such inspections. So thankfully, we're about to have "a huge, huge bomb" -- bigger and better than all the ones we had before -- that can take care of the Iranian menace once and for all.

500 Million New Terrorists!

By Hans Vogel
16.11.2009

The world is becoming unsafer by the day. Before the end of November, half a billion new terrorists will be added to the list kept by the US government.

On November 30, one day before the Lisbon Treaty is scheduled to take effect, the ministers of justice of the EU's 27 member states will sign yet another security agreement with the US. It is supposed to be an essential weapon in the global “War on Terror” the US claims to be fighting.

Under the new agreement, the US government will get access to all the banking data of all Europeans. This means that from December 2009, every single financial transaction done by every single European banking customer will come under the scrutiny of the US authorities. Henceforth, whenever the US government suspects a European “citizen” of supporting terrorism, it can request all his or her banking data, including all bank statements as well as any and all personal data connected with the account.

No doubt, many people will fail to see much harm in this, because “they have nothing to hide.” But such an attitude is based on the assumption the US is governed by benign, rational individuals, controlled by an elaborate system of checks and balances.

In fact, this is obviously not the case. If any conclusion can be drawn from recent history, it is that the US government does not act benignly, neither towards it own citizens nor to those of other nations. Especially not toward those of other nations, one should say. US policies are vindictive, vicious, ruthless, deceitful, destructive and murderous. Since the end of World War II, the number of people killed worldwide by the US government, directly or indirectly, runs in the millions. It is safe to say the US government finds itself in the same league as the Nazis and the Stalinists. And don't let anybody retort that the millions of victims of US violence have died to make the word safe for democracy, or that their deaths were somehow necessary or inevitable or some such nonsense.

Today, under the very eyes of an indifferent world, hundreds of innocent Afghans, Pakistanis and Iraqis are being slaughtered every day by US bullets, bombs and missiles, just like during the 1960s and 70s every day hundreds were being killed directly or indirectly by US violence in Indochina and Latin America.

Within a few weeks, US authorities will gain full access to some of the most private data of all inhabitants of the European Union and this should be cause for alarm. After all, from a moral point of view the EU leadership (and of the 27 member states) is just as evil and corrupt as the US government.

With the list of organizations that the US whimsically qualifies as terrorist constantly growing, the likelihood of a European “citizen” making a donation to such a group likewise increases. By the same token, the list of individuals the US has been putting on terrorist lists already runs in the millions. In fact, by employing the usual mix of lies, cajoling, blackmail and bullying in order to impose its paranoid rules on air traffic worldwide, the US government has already turned every airline passenger into a terrorist suspect.

Anybody who believes this is normal or acceptable should do some serious soul searching.

Heaven knows how the US has managed to persuade the Europeans to go along and sign the newest agreement. It is a mystery why the Europeans should have lent a willing ear at all to the US fairy tales about terrorism, because it means they will be sacrificing their sovereignty, or rather, what remains of it.

The only explanations one could possibly offer is that European politicians have no idea who they are dealing with, and are weak kneed. Or they are being blackmailed. There is no other logical explanation why European nations, some of them proud states with a long history of fiercely defending their sovereignty, would sign away their sovereign rights and hand them to a rogue state like the US.

Given that under previous agreements, European governments have already approved extraditing their own citizens to the US and given that all European governments collaborate with the secret CIA rendition flights taking kidnapped individuals to US-controlled or operated torture centers all over the world, all Europeans will soon be fair game.

The true purpose of the entire “War on Terror” can only be to terrorize peaceful, law-abiding citizens and to browbeat them in order to impose harmful legislation. For thousands of years governments have had to face underground opposition, some of it well-organized and with a propensity to violence. The best way to counter such a threat is to go about it in utter secrecy. Mind you, secret services are supposed to do their work in secret, so that no one will notice. Indeed that is what they have been doing throughout history in most of the world, especially in democratic countries. However, the US and its acolytes have been bombarding the world on a daily basis with alarmist fairy tales for almost a decade now. According to all official US reports, the increase of terrorism outpaces any efforts to combat it. However, despite having the biggest military and security budgets in history, with unlimited technological resources at its disposal and a staggering panoply of legal controls on every single activity by every single citizen, the US still claims to be losing the struggle.

This is clearly a lie. Because, whenever nations are losing a war, they will publicly deny this in the most emphatic manner. Conversely, when nations are claiming for years on end that they are losing, it has got to be be a lie. Therefore it can be safely said the “War on Terror” is a hoax.

The danger of the new agreement between the US and the EU is that nobody will know if what he or she is doing may land him in a US jail or in some distant torture center. Suppose you sympathize with a European group giving aid to the civilian victims of NATO bombing campaigns in Afghanistan. You buy a T-shirt for 20 Euros and you forget about it. Then the US government puts the group (whose T-shirt you are wearing) on the list of terror organizations and requests its banking details. As soon as the US government gets these, it has the names of everyone who has ever made donations to the group. Then your name appears and together with all the other names coming up, it is put on the terror suspect list. In the eyes of the US government, you have become a supporter of terrorism and an enemy of the (US) state. Now, nothing stands in the way of your being extradited to the US by your own (European) government. If you are lucky, that is. If not, you may end up in the worldwide US Gulag. You may get kidnapped and put on a rendition flight to a dungeon in Uzbekistan or some other hell hole, where you will be tortured in the most horrible way. Neither your government nor the European Commission will lift a finger to prevent this.

You can be sure this sort of thing is going to happen. Not systematically, but it will inevitably. Soon, rumors will start circulating, and fear will come to dominate the everyday lives of all EU citizens.

However there may be a lighter side to it all. Since your government no longer protects your life and liberty, but on the contrary has betrayed you and given the US (with its abysmal human rights record) the right to prosecute you on trumped up and false charges, you are no longer bound by any obligations to your government. It could mean, for instance, you now have sound legal grounds to stop paying taxes.

You have in fact been turned into a terrorist and an outlaw and you may thank the EU Commission and your national government for that. However, it may be a consolation to realize you are not alone. All the other 500 million inhabitants of the EU have become terrorists just like you.

Source

November 16, 2009

The destruction of Iraq was for Israel, not oil

Not Sylvia Night
November 16, 2009

When the US invasion of Iraq started in 2003 how often did we hear the slogan "No Blood for Oil" proclaimed loudly by the anti-war movement?

How often did we hear the accusation that the "insatiable thirst" for oil of the American economy and the American consumer had caused this drive for war against an oil-rich country?

But is this really what we should be focused on?

Ahmed Janabi of Al-Jazeera has good reason, supported by new documentary evidence, to see a far more important motive for the US war-policy.

On November 9, 2009 Janabi wrote:

New Iraq going "soft on Israel"

In 1951 the Arab League established the Bureau for Boycotting Israel. Based in Damascus, Syria, the bureau has lost much of its authority since Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) signed peace treaties with Israel...

Before the US-led invasion, Iraq adhered closely to the instructions of the bureau. Israeli companies, those with Israeli shareholders and companies with dealings with Israel were banned in Iraq....

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq endured 13 years of UN sanctions. During this time speculation was rife that one of the aims of the sanctions was to force Iraq into a peace process with Israel...

Al Jazeera has obtained a document written by Saddam Hussein's secretary, which conveys Hussein's rejection of an offer to partake in a peace process with Israel in exchange for the lifting of sanctions....

Badi Rafaia, a spokesman for the Federation of Anti-Normalisation with Israel Unions Committee in Jordan, said the US-led invasion of Iraq removed one of the last remaining obstacles to Israel's denial of Palestinian rights.

"[Before the war] Iraq was the main obstacle to Israel's plan to establish ties with Arab countries and subsequently swallow Palestinians' rights and demands," he said.

"We believe that Iraq's decision to allow companies with ties to Israel to work in the country is the fruit of American strategy in the region."

Before the the first Gulf war in 1991, Saddam Hussein was actually a US ally:

'Former National Security Council official, Roger Morris, says': CIA helped Baath party to power

'... in 1963, two years after the ill-fated U.S. attempt at overthrow in Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs, the CIA helped organize a bloody coup in Iraq that deposed the Soviet-leaning government of Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem. [...] Kassem, who had allowed communists to hold positions of responsibility in his government, was machine-gunned to death. And the country wound up in the hands of the Baath party.'

'At the time () Saddam was a Baath operative studying law in Cairo, one of the venues the CIA chose to plan the coup. [Saddam] was actually on the CIA payroll in those days .

"There's no question," Morris says. "It was there in Cairo that (Saddam) and others were first contacted by the agency."

In 1968 () the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protégé [Saddam] in 1979.

"It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary," Morris says.

But the American involvement with the Baath party and Saddam Hussein himself didn´t end there.

In the same year as Saddam was elevated into full power in Iraq, the Islamic revolution in Iran succeeded and the Shah, the American puppet, and his brutal torture regime were ousted, the American embassy was occupied and it´s personnel held hostage by angry Iranians.

Saddam was then encouraged to attack Iran over a border conflict. Without American support, the war would have been over in no time. Iraq, a country with a much smaller population didn´t stand a chance.

'To prevent Iraqi defeat in the war, which in the end lasted from 1980 to 1988,

the Reagan Administration began supplying Saddam with battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop movements. By the end of the decade, Washington had authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications. These included poisonous chemicals and biological viruses, among them anthrax and bubonic plague.'

Contacts between Saddam Hussein and the American government proceeded throughout that war on the highest levels. The Washington Post wrote on December 30, 2002:

'Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.'

But the end of the Iran-Iraq war wasn´t the end of the US-Iraqi connivance either. Eight days before his Aug. 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein met with April Glaspie, then America's ambassador to Iraq. It was the last high-level contact between the two countries before Iraq went to war.

From a translation of Iraq's transcript of the meeting it seemed quite obvious, that Ms. Glaspie had (in effect) given Saddam a green light to invade.

"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts," the transcript reports Glaspie saying, "such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America."

Why would the American ambassador lead a loyal American ally, a man brought to power by the CIA, into such a trap?

Why, after the attack, where the Iraqi army had been decimated, would the whole Iraqi people subsequently be punished by brutal sanctions costing millions of lives?

Was this really in the interest of the American economy or the American oil-companies?

Economist Ismael Hossein-zadeh has written that the desired policy from the perspective of the oil companies had actually been support for local strong-men, like Saddam Hussein, who would guarantee the stability needed for their business, not demolish them.

Hossein-zadeh sees the claim of the anti-war movement, that the American motivation to go to war in Iraq, was to seek the control of oil, as contradicted by observed modern history and as a contradiction in itself.

While some of these (war-) opponents argue that the war is driven by the U.S. desire for cheap oil, others claim that it is prompted by big oil’s wish for high oil prices and profits. Interestingly, most antiwar forces use both claims interchangeably without paying attention to the fact that they are diametrically-opposed assertions.

Hossein-zadeh then points out that oil-prices aren´t actually controlled by the producers, either the oil-corporations or the oil-producing countries, neither is the access to oil:

Today, oil prices (like most other commodity prices) are determined largely by the forces of supply and demand in competitive global energy markets; and any country or company can have as much oil as they wish if they pay the going market (or spot) price

To the extent that competitive oil markets and/or prices are occasionally manipulated, such subversion of competitive market forces are often brought about not so much by OPEC or other oil producing countries as by manipulative speculations of financial giants in New York and London.

.... Wall Street financial institutions have accomplished this feat through “innovative” financial instruments such as establishment of energy hedge funds and speculative oil futures markets in New York and London....

Most of the current theories of imperialism and hegemony that continue invoking that old pattern of Big Oil behavior tend to suffer from an a-historical perspective. Today, as discussed earlier, even physically occupying and controlling another country’s oil fields will not necessarily be beneficial to oil interests. Not only will military adventures place the operations of current energy projects at jeopardy, but they will also make the future plans precarious and unpredictable....

Big Oil interests also know, that not only is war no longer the way to gain access to oil, it is in fact an obstacle to gaining that access.

Exclusion of U.S. oil companies from vast oil resources in countries such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and a number of central Asian countries due to militaristic U.S. foreign policy is a clear testament to this fact.

Many of these countries (including, yes, Iran) would be glad to have major U.S. oil companies invest, explore and extract oil from their rich reserves. Needless to say that U.S. oil companies would be delighted to have access to those oil resources.

But U.S. champions of war and militarism have successfully torpedoed such opportunities through their unilateral wars of aggression and their penchant for a Cold War-like international atmosphere.

If the American oil-companies did not expect any advantages from a war against Iraq, who did?

Anti-Zionist-activist Mark Green analyzes a 60 MINUTES segment which aired on Sunday February,18 in 2007. The program claimed:

that Iraq is indeed disintegrating as a nation. But according to host Bob Simon, this isn't altogether unreasonable or, for that matter, even unfortunate.

The Kurds of Iraq, explained Simon, are the world's "largest nation without a country". Simon lends subtle support to the idea that an irredentist "ethic minority" (Kurds) deserve their own separate nation which, like Israel, is poised to spring suddenly into being out of a battered nation of extremist Arabs....

Indeed, a major part of the 'Kurdistan' story which was basically ignored by '60 MINUTES' is how the Jewish State will benefit enormously by the creation of a brand new, ardently pro-Zionist, and oil-rich ally operating right inside of what's now Northern Iraq....

Indeed, while Baghdad burns, there's an economic boom, observes Simon on '60 MINUTES', going on right now inside Iraq's Kurdish region....

Cutting Iraq into pieces, separating a Sunni from a Shiite region and creating an independent Israel-friendly Kurdistan has been on Israel´s policy agenda for at least since the 1980´s, wrote the late Israeli human-rights activist Israel Shahak in his translation of the Oded Yinon policy paper: “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”.

In 1996 some of the authors of the American Iraq-war strategy within the Bush administration reiterated Yinon´s plan about bombing and cutting Iraq to pieces in their own policy paper : A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

The paper was written 4 years before Bush the younger brought the Neocon gang with him to power. It was written for Benyamin Netanyahu, then Prime Minister of Israel. The authors were Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser.

The destruction of Iraq, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation that sympathizes with the Palestinian people and also the most advanced Arab nation, has been on the Israeli wish list for quite some time. Using the Oded Yinon/PNAC goals of securing the Middle East for Israel, the Iraq war has been an astonishing success. Whereas the outcome for U.S. based oil companies has been far from impressive.